In the past, certain local telephony service providers have offered a differentiated ringing service for households wanting to have two numbers on the same connection. When a caller places a call to one of the numbers associated with the household, the analog ring tone signal sent to the handsets in the household will vary based on the telephone number dialed. As a result, the handsets in the house will ring differently depending on the phone number dialed by the caller.
With this service, two (or more) different telephone numbers can be associated to the same telephony connection and all the phones at the customer premises ring either one of two (or more) ways, depending on the phone number called. Thus when a caller dialed the first number, all the phones in the household rang one way and when the caller dialed the second number, all the phones rang a second, slightly different way.
While this service allowed users in a household to identify without picking up the intended recipient of incoming phone calls, it does not allow a user to avoid getting disturbed by telephone calls not intended for them. However, it is well known that different users in a household, workplace, or other premises may have vastly varying phone usage habits/requirements. Yet it can be very frustrating to a user to be constantly disturbed by phone calls intended for another user, particularly when he/she cannot allow himself to unplug the telephone for fear of missing an important call.
In the context of the above, it can be appreciated that there is a need in the industry for a telephony solution that overcomes at least some of the disadvantages of the prior art.